Product Overview

Dropbox has been around for a couple of years and they have done great things in that small amount of time. I particularly like their VoteBox system which allows you to choose which features they work on first: Very clever. They offer 3 packages: 1 free and 2 premium or pro accounts. The free account gives you 2 Gb while the pro accounts give you 50 or 100 Gb . Backup and syncing are easy to setup and work continually in the background so it is a real “set it and forget it” system. They also offer unlimited file versioning as an add-on to the pro accounts. Mobile devices are fully supported with apps for iPhone and iTouch and a website for internet enabled mobile devices. Collaboration features include public and private file and folder sharing and commenting on files and folders. With many more features in the pipeline. Photo albums and video streaming are also supported. And how is this for customer facing: If you follow there getting started guide and complete 5 of the 6 steps they will give you an extra 250Mb of storage! Excellent! If you need even more space, then invite friends and you get another 250Mb per referral upto a limit of 3Gb for the free account.

Dropbox was founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and received seed funding from Y Combinator. Today, Dropbox is well-funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Amidzad. Since launching publicly in September of 2008, we've attracted over three million users and are growing rapidly. We've been featured in the New York Times and on TechCrunch, and have won awards from places like PC Magazine and CNET. Our passion is making a product that rocks and putting it in millions of people's hands.

Feature Set

Security

DropBox has good security: The web portal is SSL encrypted and you need a username and password to access your account. File transfers are protected with SSL encryption and once on their  servers, your data is encrypted with 256 AES encryption. In addition to this, their service runs on the Amazon AWS service which is supported by the Amazon name and quality stamp.

Backup Features

Continuous and Block level backups are used to ensure your files are constantly protected. Even open files are backed up on a continual basis thanks to the use of 'Block level Incremental Backups' which means that DropBox only backs up the parts of a file that have been changed, not the entire file.
Adding files and folders to the DropBox backup schedule is a snap: Simply right-click on the files you wish to protect and select 'backup with DropBox'. Different versions of files are saved so you can always restore an earlier edition of a document if you accidentally overwrite it. There is also a status indicator to show how the backup is progressing.

On the downside, network and removable drives are not supported and commercial databases such as exchange and SQL server are not supported directly.

Restore Features

Restoring your data is very easy. You have 2 main options: Restore from the web portal by logging in to your account, navigating to the file you wish to restore and choose how you wish to retrieve it. The other option is even easier: simply use the DropBox Manager to restore any desired version of a file.

Control and Analysis

Both processor speed and internet access speed (bandwidth) can be controlled from the DropBox client software. Reports and logging are also available from the client software.

Proxy servers are well supported with options for HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5.

Interface

The interface is light and easy to use. There are very few options presented which keeps everything simple and easy to use. There is client software to install and once setup, the software creates a DropBox folder where all protected files are listed.

Device Support

There is currently support for every device under the sun! The way DropBox is designed: If your devices can access the internet then they can use and be protected by DropBox.

Limitations

The web portal can only handle file uploads of up to 300Mb each but you can get around this by using compression tools such as WinRAR or WinZip which allow you to chop large files into manageable chunks.

File retention (before deletion) is 30 days unless you invest in PackRat which costs an additional $39 per year and gives you unlimited file versions and file retention. 

File Sharing and Collaboration

Files can be shared publicly – which allows anyone to view them – or privately where you allocate access rights to specific files and folders for each person or group.
Photo Albums are also supported and can also be shared either publicly or privately.
A comment can be added to each file that is shared and other people can be allowed to leave additional comments to create a discussion about a particular file or folder.

Synchronisation

Synchronization is supported between different machines and between machines and the web portal. One very good feature is the LAN synchronization. This allows users on the same network (home or work) to quickly sync changes locally without going to the internet first. This greatly reduces your internet bandwidth overhead.

Web 2.0 Integration

At the time of writing, there was no direct integration with online services to allow editing of documents, etc.

Pricing

DropBox offers 3 packages as shown below:

Plan	Free	Pro50	Pro100
Initial setup	free	free	free
Cost – Monthly	free	$9.99 / mth	$99 / mth
Cost – Yearly	free	$99 / yr	$199 / yr
Initial allowed storage amount	2Gb	50Gb	100Gb
Cost of additional storage	n/a	n/a	n/a
Cost of additional devices / PCs / users	unlimited	unlimited	unlimited
Referral Program
E-billing facility	n/a

Ease Of Use

Very easy to get to grips with: Signup, login, download the client on all your Windows, MAC and Linux computers and start syncing. As of December 2009 there is now a LAN sync feature which is really great. Both the desktop and web interfaces are clean, elegant and easy to use. All-in-all a very easy package to use.

Screenshots

Customer Support

There is no telephone, live chat or direct email customer support available. There is however, many other forms of support available: You can contact support via a web form on their website; there is an extensive knowledgebase and FAQ section; the documentation is helpful and detailed to sensible level. There are also tutorials, a demo and case studies available. However, by far the most useful resources for self-help are the forum and blog. These are full of useful advice and support from both the DropBox staff and people using the service.

Summary

DropBox is very easy to setup and use. It offers almost all the features of a fully rounded online storage solution: Backup, Web portal, multi-machine synchronization, file-versioning, online photo albums and file sharing. The only element missing is integration with online services to allow you to amend and create new files directly to your DropBox. The pricing is fair although there are better options available if you need more storage that 100Gb. The security is very good and the customer support is good, although the lack of telephone, live chat or direct email support is a bit restrictive. The forum and blog are great places to get your questions answered. If you are looking for an all-round online storage solution then DropBox is an excellent choice.